OpenMoko stops development of new handsets

OpenMoko, maker of the open source handset everyone loves to praise but no one actually wants to buy, has stated it will cease development of new mobile handsets. Citing current economic conditions and a competitive market, OpenMoko CEO Sean Moss-Pultz reportedly made the announcement yesterday at a conference in Switzerland. We can’t exactly place this decision into the shocker category considering end users — and more importantly, manufacturing partners — have been very slow to embrace the handset. Thus far, OpenMoko has only pushed out about 10,000 handsets and no major news as far as manufacturing partners offering customized builds of the phone has come into play. OpenMoko isn’t throwing in the towel just yet, however. The company intends to continue FreeRunner support and it will also commence development of a new product that isn’t a mobile phone. Interesting. With a new mobile OS going open source each day and very little interest in the physical side of OpenMoko’s FreeRunner project (hardware add-ons, customization, etc), we can’t say this is a bad decision on the company’s part.

They didn’t really have much direction to begin with. And that phone was fugly.

melmac

I like the concept behind the phone. However, the hardware sucked and the styling was “fugly,” as was pointed out. Open hardware is nice if it’s mass produced (cheap) and current (which the OpenMoko wasn’t). And with Android out with seemingly good adoption about to happen, the OpenMoko OS is rather irrelevant now too :(